In audio signal processing, clipping is a form of waveform distortion that occurs when the amplitude of an audio signal exceeds a threshold amplitude of the system processing that input signal. When this occurs, the part of the input signal above the threshold amplitude is limited or “hard-clipped” to the threshold amplitude, resulting in harmonic distortion in the output (clipped) signal.
To reduce distortion associated with hard-clipping, soft-clipping techniques have been developed in which the transition between the clipped and non-clipped parts of the input signal are smoothed. Typically a Sigmoid function or other similar non-linear polynomial is applied to the input signal. In doing so, signal artefacts are minimised and associated harmonic distortion is reduced.
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